by Lufthansa Flyer | Oct 19, 2016 | Austrian, Corporate, Featured, Industry News, Lufthansa, Swiss |
Expanding on their initial ban of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 aboard flights between the US and Europe, Lufthansa has now banned this ‘Smart Tinderbox’ from all flights on their timetable worldwide. The Lufthansa bans cover the phone being brought into the cabin and as well as being place in checked luggage.
The expansion of the ban comes after the FAA has made it a Federal crime to bring the phone aboard any flight operating to, from, or within the USA. Offenders are subject to civil penalties of up to approximately $180,000. Don’t even try to ship it via Air Mail, that’s been made a crime as well!
The ban applies to all Lufthansa Group Airlines and is effective immediately.
Related: Air Sickness Bags Coming For Your Electronics
by Lufthansa Flyer | Sep 28, 2016 | Brussels, Corporate, Featured, Lufthansa |
Lufthansa Group’s Supervisory Board has voted to approve the acquisition of the remain share of Brussels Airlines that it previously did not own, making ‘SN’ a fully owned by the Airline Group. Up until today, Lufthansa Group had owned only 45% of SN. This decision was fully expected.
The deal is expected to be closed by the beginning of 2017.
What happens from here with Brussels remains interesting. One leading idea floating around Lufthansa Group is a plan to meld Brussels into the Eurowings LCC division to bolster EW’s position among LCC carriers in Europe. With Brussel’s 51 aircraft, most of which are short to medium haul specialists, it would seem to be the likely scenario now that LH controls all of Brussels. I
in addition to the 43 short and medium haul aircraft in Brussels’ hangar, they also operate 8 A330 aircraft which would be critically important to EW as plans exist to expand EW’s long haul network next year.
BUT…..
What may change this original plan was the recent news announcing Lufthansa will wet least 40 aircraft from Air Berlin and take over a substantial portion of Air Berlin’s routes in Europe that do not involve AB’s hubs in Dusseldorf and Berlin.
IF both plans come to fruition, we may see Eurowings go from a small LCC with only 34 aircraft and turn into a European LCC powerhouse with upwards of 125 aircraft in the fleet virtually overnight. This would allow EW to take a realistic run at competitors such as Ryanair and Easyjet and have it happen in fairly short order. Which has been the plan along if you ask anyone at Lufthansa.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Sep 27, 2016 | Air Berlin, Etihad, Eurowings, Featured, LCC, Lufthansa |
Over the past few weeks it was quite obvious that Air Berlin was in ‘perilous peril’. News starting coming from Germany that Etihad was no longer happy with their stake in Air Berlin and was even looking at ways to divest of their ‘mistake’. At the top of most headlines was the fact that Lufthansa was prepared to take advantage of AB’s weakness and takeover aircraft and routes while Air Berlin restructured their operations.
With the latest news from Germany on Monday, we now gain clarity and confirmation of what has been discussed previously.
People in Europe were waking up to headlines that Air Berlin indeed will be restructuring operations in an attempt to return to profitability. Leading the list of changes is the elimination of over 1,000 jobs and reduction of its fleet of 127 aircraft to only 70 by the end of this year.
To dovetail this announcement, Lufthansa has been planning for this and had previously offered to assume control of 40 of Air Berlin’s aircraft and operate most of the Air Berlin routes that do not serve Dusseldorf or Berlin, both of which are major AB hubs. LH will ‘wet lease’ the aircraft and crews from AB and will operate them under ‘Eurowings’, LH’s Low Cost Carrier unit. What this means is Air Berlin is guaranteed to receive ‘rent’ for the aircraft, but Lufthansa gets to keep profits, or absorb losses.
In addition to the aircraft that Lufthansa will take over, it appears that Air Berlin will also sell 17 of their birds currently owned by ‘Niki’ to TUIFly. ‘Niki’ is an Austrian based subsidiary of Air Berlin.
The timing of the implosion of Air Berlin couldn’t have happened at a better time for Lufthansa. At the top of LH Group’s priority list for 2016 was to make sure that Eurowings would be set up for success and become accretive to Group’s balance sheet. So far success has been muted for a variety of reasons including the fact that the fleet is a bit undersized, uber aggressive competition from competitors, and a change in consumer sentiment in Europe that has fewer people thinking about travel.
With the injection of 40 aircraft, new routes, and broader coverage Lufthansa has the opportunity to make Eurowings what it is supposed to be, which is a low cost option for passengers to travel to destinations not usually served by mainline carriers. At this moment, Eurowings only has 33 aircraft in the fleet making it difficult to reach their goal. With the influx of 40 new aircraft, crew and hundreds of new flights, EW will have literally doubled in size over night without much effort or substantial risk.
Eurowings now has the opportunity to finally meet the expectations that everyone had for it. However the expectations may have doubled as well!
Lufthansa Group’s Supervisory Board is scheduled to meet Wednesday, September 27 to review and vote on the proposal for bailing out Air Berlin. It’s expected to be approved unanimously so expected another announcement in the coming days that confirms what we already know.
